Joe Henderson

Originally published in The Saxophone Journal March/April 1991
Special thanks to Greg Chapman for recovering this issue

Of all
the saxophonists that I would like to interview, Joe Henderson
has been at the top of my list for sometime. Since he resides
in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was able to ultimately hook up
with him in spite of his extremely busy touring schedule. I've
known Joe personally for quite a number of years and have listened
closely to his music even longer. Hearing him on record, and in
person with the likes of Horace Silver, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby
Hutcherson, Herbie Hancock's remarkable sextet, and his own groups,
Joe has proved to be among the most inventive players in jazz.
His sound and concept reflect the history of jazz saxophone, yet
introduce a logical extension.I
had the opportunity to hear Joe's new band at Oakland's Yoshi's
Nightspot. Shortly thereafter, we met at his spacious home in
San Francisco and covered a wide range of topics, including his
earliest influences, his new band, his teaching methods, and his
feelings on new and old saxophones. So, I consider it a great
honor to present to readers of Saxophone Journal, the man best
known as 'The Phantom,' the great Joe Henderson.

To me you're one of the last of the great
saxophone innovators. You have a style that many have tried to
emulate, but there's not been anybody as original as you in succeeding
generations. These things don't just fall out of the sky and hit
people over the head, it comes from somewhere. I would be interested
in knowing who your influences were. I know you've been playing
like this since you were a youngster.

That's very interesting. It's difficult for
me to blow my own horn (no pun intended). I got out of the military
in August of 1962 and moved to New York in September or October.
I started making records in the latter part of 1963. Prior to
that I was born in a little town called Lima Ohio, which is about
125 miles from Detroit. I have nine brothers and five sisters,
which is really a huge family. I remember one of my brothers,
in particular, who is a scientist, had this Jazz At The Philharmonic
collection. He was a jazz buff and it was very important and good
for me to have been around that early on, because before I started
to play the saxophone, I knew what the saxophone was a supposed
to sound like. I heard a bunch of people like Lester Young, Illinois
Jacquet, Coleman Hawkins, and Wardell Gray. Lester was probably
the first influence that I could single out. There may have been
others that are not clear, it's hard to know where and when these
influences start. But I do remember taking some Lester Young solos
off a record with the help of my brother. This was around age
nine. Well, I wasn't doing it myself, my brother was helping me,
having the kind of mind he had. It used to amaze me later how
he was able to do that at that time. We had those 78 rpm records,
so he'd take the needle, set it down on the record, and say, "Joe,
play these notes," and he'd let about four or five notes
go by, and I'd find them on the horn. You know, the one that Prez
called D.B. Blues, it became very famous later. So, I learned
that and I tried to imitate that sound. Pretty soon I could keep
this in my mind and my fingers could remember where they should
be. I remember that as being the first solo I was able to take
off a record.

So, Prez, as it turns out, was probably the
first person that I was conscious of influencing me. I had been
listening to Rhythm and Blues, and I had gone through that generation.
I was always around Country and Western music as well. I know
as much about Johnny Cash as I do about Charlie Parker, because
I grew up in that area. This was all we heard on the radio. Sometimes
I could dial in these far off stations, like in Chicago, where
I would hear something just a little more musical. A little more
similar to the records that my brother had in his collection,
and I liked this. I knew that this was bebop, and I could differentiate
that. I spent most of my time listening to bebop, and that was
what I appreciated most, so this is what I gravitated toward when
I started developing and getting a few things together about playing
the saxophone. I was still quite innocent, it was like a toy at
that point.

When I got a little older I would go out to
these dances that they would have in my home town. When James
Brown, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and these cats would
come to my hometown, I'd be there at those dances and I'd be checking
out the saxophone players. They all had saxophones; two or three
tenor players, a couple of baritones. And later James Moody would
come to town with his bands. His stuff was a little more refined
with his four horns. He'd have like a trumpet, trombone , baritone,
and tenor or alto or flute. He played all the doubles. I can remember
I saw 'Trane at a couple of these dances. When I was about fourteen
years old he came there with the Earl Bostic band. At that time
Bostic was playing tunes like Flamingo, and a bunch of
tunes that he made hit records of. I saw a lot of people who came
to that town, who ten years later from that time, would be known
as jazz personalities.

But, they spent their time paying their dues
travelling around in this Rhythm and Blues circuit. I didn't know
that guy was John Coltrane, who I had seen and had talked to and
met when I was about fourteen years old. I also saw Gene Ammons
when I was about fifteen. He was the 'Red Top" guy. You know
this tune My Little Red Top? Yeah, that was classic stuff.
Good music. So, my tastes became a little refined later on.

So, my information and my knowledge is growing
because I'm starting to buy records and starting to hear people
like Stan Getz, Herbie Steward, Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, and
Duke Ellington. All this stuff was having more meaning. And all
at the same time I was listening to Bartok, Stravinsky, and Hindemith
because of my one sister's tastes. I didn't know who Stravinsky
was, but I knew I liked the music that I heard.

Later I started meeting other musicians in
town, who started showing me things. I'm learning tunes, my vocabulary
is growing in terms of tunes that I had memorized, and I'm playing
dances around town. So, I'm getting into it very innocently. If
I made a couple of bucks playing a dance, that was big money for
me. But the information that I was gathering at that time was
the thing that served me well later. I was getting a chance to
play the saxophone at a time when this was what I should be doing.
Nobody had to tell me "Joe, go in and practice your saxophone."
I just did this.

Earlier on, I started writing tunes. When I
was about fourteen or fifteen years old, I wrote my first composition.
That tune was recorded on a Bluenote record, the very first record
I did. It's one of the tunes that I get the most recognition for
and it's called Recordame. When I first wrote it, it had
a Latin flavor to it. But when the Bossa Nova came out I changed
it to fit that rhythm, which meant that I changed a couple of
phrases around.

I don't know where it all came from, but I've
always personally suspected that I don't have an identifiable
sound as a player. I shouldn't be allowed an opinion of my own
stuff, I realize that.

It's hard to appraise your own work. To
hear this come from you is very important to me, as I'm sure to
the people reading this article. And to learn that, wow, you mean
he doesn't know that either? You just don't know because you can't
be a critic and a player at the same time.

It really is hard to appraise your own work!
Earlier on I wanted to be one of the greatest interpreters of
music that the world has ever seen. If somebody put music down
in front of me, I wanted to be able to interpret this music better
than the writer. I also wanted to be a player of ballads. I really
liked to play ballads, as ironic as that might be. Many times
when I play it's kind of a frantic situation.

You made your mark in what was called the
'hard bebop' post-bop era. It was a harder style to play, the
Bluenote style. The whole gang of East Coast players that were
really putting that style down. That's what I came up with. I'm
about five years younger that you, so I came up behind that listening
to you, and a whole bunch of other folks out of that era.

That was a great era. There was a bunch of
musical people around during the time that I was fortunate enough
to have been associated with in the studios and on some gigs.
I started to pick up the dice and roll them a bit, taking some
chances with a few notes. Even at that time I didn't think I would
have played something that wasn't musical or didn't fit the context
of what was happening with the music.

After I had been in the military, been to Detroit
and to college in Kentucky, I went to New York. I went to New
York when I was about twenty-five. Naturally, when you first get
to New York there's these people who try to pigeonhole you by
saying, "He sounds like this, always sounds like that, etc.'
There were some people that heard me who said, "I've been
hearing this guy since he was fourteen years old and he's always
sounded like that.' This is even before some of the people they
said that I sounded like emerged onto the scene. Far be it for
me to defend myself and say I don't sound like that. If they say
I sound like that, well then maybe I do. This was a crucial time.
How do you defend yourself in a situation like that? The writers
and musicians needed to hear that I was original and always had
been. Their mouths dropped open. Maybe I've been developing something
that's fairly uniquely my own for a long time, but you're not
aware of this stuff, you simply play. I've been a person who enjoys
playing the saxophone, making music, writing melodies, writing
compositions, and doing arrangements of minor importance for big
bands and orchestras. But I never try to rate myself in any kind
of way. I let other people do that.

I agree. I have read reviews that said you
sounded like John Coltrane, etc. To me you always sounded like
Joe Henderson. You have an iconoclastic style that sets you apart
from other players. You're not consciously trying to emulate,
yet you have influences that are very obvious. I can hear Charlie
Parker, and I can hear Prez in your tone. You do not play in the
Coleman Hawkins big brash style. In addition to this, I hear a
lot of individualistic harmonic ideas that nobody else played
at that time, or since. I'm curious, did you study with Larry
Teal?

I sure did, for about three years. I also went
to Wayne University for about five years. The year I got drafted
I changed to Wayne State University. A lot of musicians went through
that school. Yusef Lateef was there, Donald Byrd, Kenny Burrell,
Hugh Lawson (we were in some classes together). Yusef and I were
also in classes together. He was much older than I, going back
to school, and taking a couple of courses as a non-matriculated
student. We used to study together. Yusef was zooming and he was
light years ahead of me in terms of understanding it all. In the
next semester it dawned on me what the teacher was trying to run
down in the first semester.

From about that point on I understood things
in the present instead of it being a delayed situation. There's
a point where you understand the information as they're running
it down to you, and there's a point where you've got to do a little
research and then you understand it. Then when Yusef and I studied
together I was ahead of him. I remember feeling good about that,
but I also felt good about being able to help him understand the
things he didn't understand. Therein lies the genesis of me understanding
myself as a teacher. I was in this environment that was about
bebop. We learned every Charlie Parker tune that was every written.
There was so much music that came through at that time. Fortunately,
my radar was working and I was absorbing everything. I started
understanding things like chord inversions where you don't have
to play chords from the root up all the time. You can start from
the 5th or the 6th or the 7th. As long as you know what the root
feel is about you can turn things inside out taking this combination
of notes and stack them up any number of ways.

What I hear in your playing is that you
play intervals that go beyond the 13th. When you stack up intervals
and play the 13th, you get all the hip sounds like the sharp eleven,
and flat and sharp ninths. But, say you take a C13, where you
have a C, and you might have a Bb, a D, an E, and F# and an A.
You can go up and play a C13 oil top of that and it will work.
You'll play an F natural on top of that and it will work. When
you're not playing bebop kinds of lines, I hear you play some
heavy arpeggios running through and across and around, sideways,
all kinds of ways, but it seems to me you're playing intervals
that go beyond the 13th.

I've heard things in that zone. This stems
back from some of the non conventional sounds and combinations
of notes that I first heard through Bartok and Stravinsky. I started
to understand chords, chord movement, and chord classification
in one set of chords; where it all came from and where it goes
from there. Having a sense of composition has served me well,
and also having a rich sense of rhythm, and a desire not to repeat
stuff. I consider it one of the worst sins a musician could possibly
commit, to play an idea more than one time. You've got to keep
changing things around, keep inventing, and especially when you're
making records. I came into it thinking of change being a constant
thing. I can remember going onto the bandstand after being around
Detroit for a few years, and consciously getting my brain to start
phrases on different notes of the bar, with a different combination
of notes, and a different rhythm. I developed the ability to start
anywhere in the bar and it lent to a whole new attitude of constant
variation. I would start with the first bar, not starting it on
one but starting it on the 'and' of four or the 'and' of three,
with a series of sixteenth notes with several triplets. I would
let the first four bars take care of themselves until we got to
the fifth bar, and start that at a certain point of the rhythmic
structure of the bar. Then I'd start something in the seventh
bar. What I was developing was a sense of not falling into that
habit of playing the same things all the time. We are creatures
of habit anyway so its easy to fall into them. You practice early
on so that habits don't form which have to be dealt with later,
like bad fingerings that you have to clean up later.

Those are technical processes, but you're
also talking about creative musical processes. Instead of always
following the same mental path you can evoke a different process
whenever you want to. Everybody wants your formula. How many students
have come to you and said, 'Joe, what are those patterns?'

And those are the kind of students I don't
take. I want to effect the part of their brain to create these
things. When you think about this in a certain way, there is no
formula.

What they hear as a formula is actually
something you created spontaneously out of all of the resources
that you have at your command.

The way I teach is memory plus improvisation.
I generally don't allow tape recorders at the lesson, although
I will bend on that as it's so much a part of things now. In terms
of them understanding what their creative faculty is supposed
to be about, they don't need a tape recorder. We'll travel as
far as their brain can go during a lesson. There's so much printed
material around, fake books, etc., and I don't remember using
those kinds of things. These things tend to become crutches. I
learned the tunes. I've seen people come up on the bandstand and
before I call count the tune off I'm hearing people turning these
pages (laughter). Night after night they're still trying to find
this song. I really wish they would understand that the mind will
absorb the music in its time. You can't overload it.

There's so much that can enter into learning
songs. Your emotional state and why you like a particular song.

One can get involved in all those aspects and
make it more meaningful when they play. Teaching allows us to
plant some trees, and to keep the art form alive. The information
that was passed on to us helped us to enjoy the planet a little
more through our music.

You recently had a new, young, all female
band. Would you talk about them?

These people are young in years, and on a certain
level, in their experience. Irene Rosnes is the pianist and came
to New York from Vancouver, Canada. The drummer is Sylvia Cuenca
and is from San Jose. I've known her since she was sixteen. The
bassist is Marlene Rosenberg from Chicago and is twenty-eight.
Now the level of experience of the pianist, for example, is far
beyond her age of twenty-five years. We've all been to Europe
three times and will go again. We've enjoyed a great deal of success
out there. These are talented people and they are doing precisely
what they should be doing. They're growing.

The impression I got is that you're allowing
them the space to learn and absorb from a master, and the experience
of playing and traveling together.

Somebody has to provide that when you consider
their level of talent, so they can perfect their craft. I plan
to record something soon with Blue Note. Although the uniqueness
of the group gets a lot of attention, I'm not trying to make a
social political statement or the like.

I found them very complimentary to your
sound. You can be an aggressive player but your sound texture
is generally of a softer nature, and their accompaniment is really
quite suitable. But I have to say that your bassist plays as hard
as any I've ever heard.

I've been on the bandstand with women before
and there's some things I do notice. It's probably a situation
that has to do more with experience than anything else. Jack DeJohnette
sat in with us in Paris and he brought that 'manhood' to the stand.
I thought that I would miss that, and maybe I had been missing
that all along. But Sylvia came back and played the way she had
developed with us and it was fine. I really feel its the experience
that makes the difference. Mainly, men have been drummers and
bass players. We've always had women piano players. They aren't
trying to be men on their instruments. I have experienced with
other women, however, a kind of going overboard to try and assert
the Yang part of themselves, more so than necessary, to the point
of abandoning their own delicacy as women. I worked with a pianist
who would do this and I would mention it in a real professional
way that she was neglecting that part of her nature.

You were telling me that you received more
notoriety for this group than anything you've done in the past.

In Europe they were coming at me with a battery
of microphones and cameras. Once they hear the music, they are
convinced. The writeups haven't focused primarily on the fact
that they are ladies, but they can't avoid it either.

At this point in our conversation we got
into a discussion about vintage Selmer saxophones, sparked by
Joe's recent purchases of a 56,000 series Mark VI This was necessitated
by the loss, by theft, of one of his saxophones which was later
returned by one of his students. Also, the ultimate destruction,
by fire in an automobile accident, of his original 54,000 series.

A guy called me from Dallas who knew I would
be coming through with the George Gruntz big band. I called him
back and he said he had two Selmers to show me. When I got there
he had them laid out in the dressing room. I had no idea that
this was the vintage horn I'd been looking for. When I picked
one up and played it, I couldn't believe how well it played. When
my previous horn was destroyed, after twenty-six years, I thought
it could never be replaced.

It's such a great story how that
horn came back to you through Hafez Modir, who we were both teaching
at that time. I'll never forget him coming into his lesson and
telling me about it.

Hafez was totally innocent. He simply came
over for a lesson. About half an hour into the lesson he asked
me to try his horn and check his low B. Usually I play piano and
assign lines, a more "here and now approach." I really
didn't want to do what he was asking, so I tried to steer him
away from that by giving him more demanding material. But, he
had the right kind of persistence. So, after hanging on the ropes
about another half an hour I said, 'look man, give me the horn.'
I went upstairs and got my mouthpiece and soaked up my reed, and
started to play this horn. There were some thing that only I knew
about that identified the horn. There was a screw right next to
the octave key that would work its way out from time to time and
would jab me in the finger. I had it filled down. As I was playing,
these things began to come through. I was sitting there talking
to myself and thinking, 'man, this is my horn!' I didn't want
to give the student the impression that I had flipped out. But,
after about fifteen more minutes he wanted it to be my horn. He
called it a case of "the son coming back to the father."
I exchanged another Selmer with him for my original horn. Apparently
it had been purchased a year and a half earlier by a young lady
in New York, and I had neglected to keep track of the serial number.
If I had known approximately what the number was I could have
gotten to a similar horn sooner. Someone once asked me whether
or not I felt there was something "magical" about Selmers.
I had to say there certainly was something magical about this
particular vintage, but I feel their more recent horns have lost
that quality. After my original horn was stolen I needed a new
one. I was speaking with Selmer's engineers and discussing what
I felt were problems with the Mark VII, which was the horn that
no one knew I was playing.

Johnny Griffin told me he had one for awhile
but took it back because his clothes kept getting caught in the
keys.

Their answer was, "the kids want it."
I realize these people are busy in their labs trying to develop
new ideas, but please keep making that original product which
so many people were happy with. They had Super 80's for me to
try and that's what I've been playing until now. I'm sure it would
be profitable for them to put out an instrument that sounds and
feels good to the player. The Japanese are becoming very competitive
in the musical instrument business. I talk to saxophonists all
over the world, like myself, who are seriously questioning the
quality of the new instruments. After all, our survival is depended
on this.

Do you have any final comments?

I'm in constant search of new information and
ideas, and I want to make the best of this short time that we're
out here on this planet living this nebulous thing called life.
And I want to plant a few trees along the way and nurture some
minds and watch them grow, as people did for me.